I made it to the national finals in the Finnish Barista Cup. To be honest I wasn’t really surprised – quite the opposite actually. When you have 10 competitors in the semifinals and six of them are going through to the finals a somewhat okay routine and decent espresso (I used Nekisse from Ethiopia) should secure you a place on the next round. It did, luckily. Otherwise I wouldn’t be there – and that of course wasn’t how I thought it would be.
I take this competition very seriously. Maybe more seriously than anyone else, who knows. Anyway, that’s something I thought would take me to the top – there’s only one going to Colombia. But in the midsts of all that serious training, cupping, practice routines and pouring capps I forgot the most important part of barista competition.
After watching and analysing Mike Phillips’ performance a few times in a row at 1 am and planning all the small details I thought I was ready. I sort of was, just nervous as hell and afraid of forgetting my speaks. I had digged all the information about the coffee I could find and thought that knowledge and “understanding” would award me good scores. After the last practice routine the night before I was full of self-confidence – so full that I forgot to think about the taste.
As probably everyone knows three most important things in coffee are taste, taste and taste. I think that nothing else matters if the taste isn’t right yet I arrogantly believed the opposite. I only pulled one shot during the prep time although it was unfamiliar machine. Obviously the espresso didn’t pour as nicely as it could have as I had adjusted the dose too big. It would have been very easy to lower it a bit but for some reason I didn’t. Big mistake no 1.
It doesn’t matter how convincingly I’m telling all the fine taste descriptions to the judges if they can’t find those in the coffee – and nor did I. I arrogantly believed I could do the same as the WBC finalists, telling all the fine notes one can find in the coffee. The difference is that they have the basics covered before that and I don’t. Mistake no 2. As you can guess, I didn’t get very good points from my espressos.
Arrogance is something I can’t tolarate yet I can way too often be blamed at it.
I took the semifinals too seriously and as a result of that my performance didn’t look good. The passion I originally wanted to bring out didn’t really show out. I showed the judges that I knew something about the coffee but knowledge and especially love did not end up in the cup.
Luckily I managed to gather enought points to make it to the finals. If some other baristas would have achieved their potential routines I wouldn’t be there. I’m going to change my routine thoroughly and take a little bit different approach to the competition. Instead of just aiming for winning I’m going to take a more relaxed approach and serve some pretty damn good coffee (without saying it has “date sweetness” that it does not have…).
Semifinals and mistakes
I made it to the national finals in the Finnish Barista Cup. To be honest I wasn’t really surprised – quite the opposite actually. When you have 10 competitors in the semifinals and six of them are going through to the finals a somewhat okay routine and decent espresso (I used Nekisse from Ethiopia) should secure you a place on the next round. It did, luckily. Otherwise I wouldn’t be there – and that of course wasn’t how I thought it would be.
I take this competition very seriously. Maybe more seriously than anyone else, who knows. Anyway, that’s something I thought would take me to the top – there’s only one going to Colombia. But in the midsts of all that serious training, cupping, practice routines and pouring capps I forgot the most important part of barista competition.
After watching and analysing Mike Phillips’ performance a few times in a row at 1 am and planning all the small details I thought I was ready. I sort of was, just nervous as hell and afraid of forgetting my speaks. I had digged all the information about the coffee I could find and thought that knowledge and “understanding” would award me good scores. After the last practice routine the night before I was full of self-confidence – so full that I forgot to think about the taste.
As probably everyone knows three most important things in coffee are taste, taste and taste. I think that nothing else matters if the taste isn’t right yet I arrogantly believed the opposite. I only pulled one shot during the prep time although it was unfamiliar machine1. Obviously the espresso didn’t pour as nicely as it could have as I had adjusted the dose too big. It would have been very easy to lower it a bit but for some reason I didn’t. Big mistake no 1.
It doesn’t matter how convincingly I’m telling all the fine taste descriptions to the judges if they can’t find those in the coffee – and nor did I. I arrogantly believed I could do the same as the WBC finalists, telling all the fine notes one can find in the coffee. The difference is that they have the basics covered before that and I don’t. Mistake no 2. As you can guess, I didn’t get very good points from my espressos.
Arrogance is something I can’t tolarate yet I can way too often be blamed at it.
I took the semifinals too seriously and as a result of that my performance didn’t look good. The passion I originally wanted to bring out didn’t really show out. I showed the judges that I knew something about the coffee but knowledge and especially love did not end up in the cup.
Luckily I managed to gather enought points to make it to the finals. If some other baristas would have achieved their potential routines I wouldn’t be there. I’m going to change my routine thoroughly and take a little bit different approach to the competition. Instead of just aiming for winning I’m going to take a more relaxed approach and serve some pretty damn good coffee (without saying it has “date sweetness” that it does not have…).